from the on-the-shoulders-of-giants dept

The website Copygrounds, which has been interviewing various people involved in various copyright issues, has an interview with the always interesting Henry Jenkins (who we've quoted a few times in the past). The whole interview is worth reading, but I wanted to call attention to one key part, when the interviewer asks Jenkins about the European concept of "moral rights," which the US has explicitly rejected:

The current American system rewards authorship rights to corporate owners at the expense of both consumers and authors. The European tradition rewards moral rights to authors at the expense of the rest of the culture. Neither represents the most desirable system, in part because both falsify the actual conditions of authorship. Authors do not create value in a vacuum. All writers are already readers who are processing elements of their culture as the raw material for their own expressive and intellectual output, and in turn, their work becomes the raw materials for the next phase of creative expression.

That line: "Authors do not create value in a vacuum," is a good one, and deserves to be repeated. So much of the debates we have on copyright and related issues seems to center on this belief that they do. In that patent realm, it's the whole "flash of genius" concept, but it certainly applies in copyright as well. The system is designed as if people are creating things entirely from scratch, rather than pulling from the culture around them to put it together in new and creative means. Disney, of course, is famous for taking old stories and making them new again, and yet it refuses to let others do the same to its works. Authors do not create value in a vacuum. And, of course, it goes beyond the idea that authors are building on what's come before. The value piece is often added by the readers themselves, and how they interact, mold and share the content that has been created. Authors do not create value in a vacuum... but we've built up laws and institutions that seem to assume they do.

from the thinking-does-not-make-it-so dept

I'm quite often confused by those who consider themselves big supporters of pure free market capitalism, but who also are adamant believers in the importance of intellectual property. Perhaps the largest group of such folks are the so-called "Objectivist" followers of Ayn Rand. Capitalist Magazine is running an Objectivist defense of the recent ProIP law that was recently signed into law despite basically being a government handout to the entertainment industry. Stephen Kinsella has responded to many of the points made in the original article, and picks up on a key point that many defenders of intellectual property always pull out in their defense:

The creator of content owns the content because he created it through his own labor, and you should always own the fruits of your own labor.

The problem is this just isn't true and never has been. Simply providing the labor does not equal ownership. As Kinsella notes in his response:

His argument? "If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it." And likewise, for "music, movies, software." But note the mistake here Johson makes: "If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it." The "therefore" is the giveaway: he says this because he thinks of the creation of the loaf as the act that gives rise to ownership. Then this leads to the analogy with other created things, like music. But creation of the loaf is not the reason why the baker owns it. He owns the loaf because he owned the dough that he baked. He already owned the dough, before any act of "creation"--before he transformed it with his labor. If he owned the dough, then he owns whatever he transforms his property into; the act of creation is an act of transformation that does not generate any new property rights. So creation is not necessary for him to own the resulting baked bread. Likewise, if he used someone else's dough--say, his employer's--then he does not own the loaf, but the owner of the dough does. So creation is not sufficient for ownership.

Exactly. Creation alone does not grant property rights if none existed prior to that transformation. I would even take the argument a step further. Even if you own something due to the fact that you created it, once you have given away or sold that product, you no longer have ownership of it -- and claiming you do actually removes property rights from the lawful owner.

That is, if I make a loaf of bread, and then sell it to someone, I no longer have control over that loaf of bread. I cannot tell the new owner that he can only make French toast with it and cannot feed the bread to the pigeons. That's for the new owner to determine. I certainly cannot tell him that he cannot take the bread and try to resell it or even give it away to others. That's part of the free market. Yet, intellectual property enthusiasts do want to remove these property rights from the recipients of copies of the original good. Despite their claims of being property rights supporters, they are actually the opposite. They are trying to deny property rights to any recipient.

from the sincerest-form-of-flattery dept

Reader johnjac points us to a blog post from a guy who made some computer generated images of flocking birds, and was rather stunned when he discovered that a big time fashion designer had basically yanked one of his photos off of Flickr and put it on a sweatshirt. While we hear so many stories of people freaking out in such situations, this guy's reaction is quite refreshing:

The more we looked, the more the neighboring details fell into place. Smith's version was mirrored left to right so I loaded the image in Photoshop and flipped it. "Oh my god! He totally stole my work!" I was dancing around the room. "Paul Smith stole from me!" I will admit it was a strange reaction. I didn't realize this until later in the day. I was actually thrilled that someone had ripped me off. Someone I liked.

Later on in the post, the guy, Robert Hodgin, admits that his own works are built off of the works of others, as well. And, that's exactly how creativity works: you build on the works of others. It shouldn't be seen as a crime or something to get angry about. It's a way to provide more materials for more creativity going forward.